Faith
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Coda to episode 43, "Friend or Foe". Zakuro tells her young admirer the story of how she lost her faith and found it again.


Faith

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Tokyo Mew Mew

Copyright: Reiko Yoshida, Mia Ikumi

It was the day after Zakuro's apparent defection, in which she had threatened to leave the Mew Mews and join Kishu. She had returned in the end, but not without cost; she and Mint had nearly killed each other, and their relationship might never be the same again.

Mint peered over at Zakuro from the opposite end of the café's changing room. They were alone together; the others, being more careless with their clothes as usual, had already left.

Even the way the older woman put on a sweater was graceful; the tugging of the sleeves until they fit, the outward flick of her lavender hair. Zakuro turned, her blue eyes meeting Mint's brown ones. Mint looked away, brushing nonexistent wrinkles out of her uniform on its hanger.

"What's the matter?" asked Zakuro.

There was no use in dissembling; Zakuro's perceptiveness was too sharp, especially where her young admirer was concerned. Mint blushed.

"Onee-sama, may I ask you a personal question?"

Zakuro lowered her eyes. "You may, but I don't have to answer."

Mint clenched her fists and took a deep breath. "Who was that person? The important person you lost?"

Zakuro, after a long, searching look at Mint, sat down on the wooden bench running along the wall, crossed her long legs, and patted the seat next to her.

"Come here and listen – but do _not_ tell the others."

"I won't tell, Onee-sama. I promise." Mint sat, her heart pounding. Her Onee-sama was about to confide in her as she never had before.

"I grew up in California," she began, in the soft monotone of a mother reading a story to her child. "Not Los Angeles, though. A smaller town. My parents immigrated there from Japan when I was very young. There was a beautiful church on the street where we lived; the stained-glass windows fascinated me. We attended the services every Sunday; mostly to assimilate into society, I think. But I loved it. I truly believed in Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity; I wanted to be a nun. Can you imagine?" Mint couldn't. They smiled at each other crookedly.

"When I was fourteen, I had my first love. It happened to be a girl, a classmate of mine, and I was terrified. In my congregation, you see, homosexuality was considered a sin. But the real sin, I believe, is what I did next."

Zakuro sighed. "I stopped seeing Jessica. I avoided her like the plague, didn't even tell her what was wrong. I started going out with my closest male friend, a boy from my congregation. I liked him very much, but I never loved him.

"Jessica was heartbroken. And in the way of teenage girls, she got her revenge. She graffitied my name on the bathroom walls and started spreading rumors about me – that I was a slut, and so on."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously as she continued. "My so-called 'brothers and sisters in Christ' all began to look at me sideways; some of them informed me haughtily that they were praying for my soul – hmph! As if they cared. And the boy I was seeing … Matthew … well, it turned out he'd been struggling with clinical depression for a long time and hiding it from everyone he knew. But the gossip about me, on top of everything else, was too much. He was crazy about me." She said it without vanity, as a simple fact.

"I swore to him I was a virgin, but he wouldn't believe me. We argued. He seemed to think he was never good enough for me, and it would be no surprise if I cheated on him. Maybe if I'd really loved him in the first place, I could have talked him around. But I didn't. He didn't believe me. He was found in front of the altar steps one morning, with an empty pack of sleeping pills in his hand."

There was a long pause, in which Mint could hardly breathe, reeling from the impact of the story as if from a blow. _My Onee-sama … how could she survive that? How can she talk about it now in such a detached tone of voice? _

_I knew it. I always knew it. It was the secret sadness in her eyes, even in magazine photos, that made me love her so very much._

"They all blamed me, of course. Oh, they knew I didn't kill him" – seeing the alarmed look on Mint's face – "But they could make a good guess as to who had been upsetting him enough to make him take his own life. I couldn't believe a loving God could allow this to happen. I stopped attending services, and when I went to church, I went alone – to ignore God and remember Matthew. I never meant for my Mew weapon to turn out a crucifix; that might have been a lucky guess of Shirogane's, or it might have been a sign.

"I thought my parents at least would understand, but even my mother turned against me. I'd had enough. I took my confirmation money and bought a one-way ticket to Japan. As to the rest, you've probably read it all in your fan articles."

Mint nodded. The tale of Zakuro's cataclysmic rise to stardom was well documented. No wonder she couldn't abide tabloid rumors, in spite of her celebrity status. No wonder she had been so hurt that her comrades had believed the press over her in the matter of her potential move to Hollywood. Hurt enough to almost abandon them. Except …

"Really, Onee-sama!" Mint shook her head, knocking her double hair buns askew. "So you were upset because we didn't have faith in you? Why couldn't you have had faith in us?"

Zakuro glared for a moment – then dropped her eyelashes. When they rose again, her blue eyes were unusually soft.

"You're right, Mint. I overreacted. And not even helping you when you fell in my defense … for that, I am truly sorry."

She put an arm around Mint, who snuggled closer in silent acceptance of the apology.

"I received this a week ago," Zakuro continued, pulling an overseas letter from the pocket of her long, plum-colored coat. "It's from my mother, wanting to reconcile. I nearly threw it into Tokyo Bay, but perhaps I'll write back after all."

Mint thought of Seiji, her tall and elegant older brother, who had been like a stranger to her for so long until a harrowing Chimera Animal attack at her ballet recital brought them back together.

"It's hard to deny the family connection," she mused out loud.

"Very wise, Mint," said Zakuro as she put the letter away.

With a sudden sweep of motion, the older woman stood up and shrugged into the coat, handing Mint her own cream-colored parka on the hanger next to it.

"I think perhaps we'd better leave," she said, "Before Akasaka-san locks the building on us."

Could it be Zakuro was embarrassed by having revealed so much?

"What you said doesn't make a difference, Onee-sama," she said, impulsively putting both hands on Zakuro's arm. "You're still everything to me!"

Zakuro blinked, and her eyes widened just a little. "Even though you thought I'd betrayed you?"

"Especially then. I can't explain it – and I know I'm much too young for you, I just … "

"Shh." Zakuro placed a cool finger on Mint's lips. "I know."

They stood together in the doorway, the small girl and the tall one, framed by the evening light streaming in from the café's heart-shaped windows.

"Mint … "

"Yes?"

"Will you come to church with me next Sunday?"

Mint was an indifferent agnostic at best, not having been raised with any religion in particular, but she nodded without hesitation.

"But why, Onee-sama? I thought you preferred to pray alone?"

"I've been praying alone for far too long," was all the explanation Zakuro gave.

Mint understood, and smiled up at her idol with determined warmth. Zakuro, to Mint's delight, actually smiled back.


End file.
